1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display device and an electronic appliance.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various types of flat-panel displays (FPDs), including liquid crystal displays (LCDs), plasma display panels (PDPs) and electroluminescence (EL) displays, have been researched and developed vigorously since early 1990s. Display devices of these types are much more space-saving than old-fashioned ones, and have rapidly been expanding their applications in audiovisual, office automation, medical imaging and numerous other types of information providing appliances for use in not just homes and offices but also public facilities such as hospitals, restaurants and hotels.
Also, interactive electronic appliances, such as automatic teller machines (ATMs) and electronic guidance systems including a touch panel display, have been popularized recently in those public facilities. An electronic appliance of this type prompts the user to input information responsive to a question displayed thereon or displays information in response to the question that has been input by the user.
Meanwhile, buildings of today are often designed so as to have a highly airtight and thermally insulating structure. Those buildings can certainly shut the heat or the cold off the internal environment but might possibly cause a pollution of the internal air environment unless ventilated or air-conditioned appropriately. Should the internal air environment be polluted with harmful contaminants floating in the indoor air (including microorganisms and odor-emitting organic substances), the human health could be seriously affected by those contaminants, thus potentially causing a rise in the number of allergic patients or asthmatics. Under the circumstances such as these, an increasing number of people should need a device of removing those detrimental contaminants from the indoor air to lead a healthy and comfortable life. Naturally, it is even more pressing to satisfy those needs in sickrooms, diagnosis rooms and operation rooms of hospital facilities among other things.
To meet those needs, air-conditioning systems with a special function, such as air purifiers, have been developed. An air-conditioning system of that type absorbs the air with those contaminants from inside the room or the storeroom and removes those contaminants by getting them adsorbed into, or decomposed by, various sorts of filters. However, such air-conditioning systems require regular maintenance (e.g., filter exchange) because those systems are often operated all day long or at least for a rather long time. In addition, the performance of those air-conditioning systems is not fully satisfactory yet due to the insufficient quality of currently available filters.
Thus, to overcome these problems, air-conditioning systems of the type increasing the ion concentration in the air by using an ion generator (or ionizer) have also been put on the market. However, those ion-generating, air-conditioning systems currently available can generate negative ions only. Such air-conditioning systems may relax the user to a certain degree but should be almost ineffective in removing floating bacteria from the air, for example.
Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 11-316550 discloses a display device with an air purifying function. However, that display device can just gather dust from the air and cannot remove the floating bacteria from the air, either.
None of the existent display devices or electronic appliances including display devices (such as ATMs and personal computers) has ever been equipped with the function of protecting the user's health. For example, when a display device is used on a medical spot, it is not a rare case at all to watch somebody there disinfect the display screen of the device with alcohol. However, such a custom not just needs manual hygienic maintenance on the display device but may also cause defects in the display device.